Hank Sapoznik

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Henry "Hank" Sapoznik (b. 1953, Brooklyn) is an award winning author, producer of radio and records and a performer of traditional Yiddish and American music. With MacArthur Fellow David Isay, he produced the critically acclaimed 10 week radio series the "Yiddish Radio Project" on the history of Jewish broadcasting for National Public Radio’s "All Things Considered" in the spring of 2002. The series won the prestigious Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism for 2002.

A pioneering scholar and performer of klezmer music, he founded the Archives of Recorded Sound at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and was its first director from 1982-1994. Spearheading the renewal of interest in klezmer music with his pioneering group Kapelye, in 1985 Sapoznik started "KlezKamp:The Yiddish Folk Arts Program" the world's most important training venue for practitioners of this nearly lost art and co-founded Living Traditions in 1994 to administer it. His Klezmer! Jewish Music from Old World to Our World (Schirmer Books), the first book on the history of klezmer music in English, was the winner of the 2000 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Excellence in Music Scholarship. He has produced 15 reissues of historic recordings of Jewish music, including an unprecedented four volume CD set of Yiddish recording from 1912-1950 for Columbia Legacy.

He was nominated for a 1990 Grammy award for his production and performance on the recording "Partisans of Vilna" and for a 2002 Emmy Award for his music score to the documentary film The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg. In the area of music performance he plays with the New York old time music group "The Brooklyn Corn Dodgers" and the Yiddish music trio "The Youngers of Zion."

Hank was also a very active participant in the study and performance of southern old-time banjo styles beginning with his field trips to North Carolina with Ray Alden in the 1970s. He was involved in many recordings and was a member of many string bands in the New York area including the Delaware Water Gap. In 2005, he produced "You Ain't Talkin' To Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music", a 3 CD set for Columbia Legacy.